Raine Collindale
December 27, 2021 5:11 AM
Playdate 7, 6-ish years old by Raine Collindale
OOC: (And 2-ish years old for Noelle - I can't remember how much older Otto is than her though). BIC:
The visit to Professor Xavier’s was a little squeezed this year. It also involved Noelle, as well as Summer, on the grounds that she and Otto were old enough to at least play near each other, and also Raine really didn’t have anywhere else to put her. Raine and Dante had both been working a lot of extra hours, mostly trying to stick to alternating schedules or child-friendly gigs because paying for childcare would rather wipe out the point of working more. It was one of those situations where the super extended Collindale family network would have been a good thing, except Raine was loathe to rely on that too much. They were cordial to each other, in small doses, and Starr was an occasional feature in Summer’s life. She could just about trust him to do an afternoon of childcare if they really needed it but she was afraid of opening up old arguments by asking too frequently.
Still, as Summer sprawled on the floor, explaining to Dora about ‘reading dots’ she felt it was worth it. For one brief moment in the year, she had actually thought she might be able to relax. Noelle was a constant surprise, in a good way. All the things that had been a struggle for Summer she just did. From her reading, Raine knew that they were right on time, but it still caught her off guard every time Noelle just did something. Once she’d started helping Summer, once they’d worked out the ways she needed help, she’d made leaps and bounds in catching up. And the milestone lists trailed off at about the age Summer was getting to. It had felt, for a moment, like a glorious finish line.
Then she had realised, it stopped because school started, and along with it, a whole other set of expectations. She still hoped to be able to teach Summer magic herself, not have to send her away. Sure, some good things had come out of Raine’s time at Sonora, but much as she was pulling away from her family’s way of doing things, there were still some points where she aligned with them. She couldn’t say she was really a fan of boarding schools. But before Summer started spells, she had to learn her basics, like her letters and her numbers. And here, Raine was truly out her depth. Her own mom had done a passable job in teaching them their reading and writing, but the limited contact meant that wasn’t a strong source of help. And, even if she’d been available, would she have known how to teach Summer?
Raine didn’t know where to start, and for all she could pour hours into reading library books on it, this wasn’t the preschool basics of ‘read her stories’ or ‘sing songs with her’ which she had known naturally how to do. This was a real skill, and one she didn’t have. Hence all the extra work hours, so they could at least get some guidance from a specialised tutor. Judging by the fact that Summer was currently doing literacy lessons of her own volition in her free time, it had been a good idea…
“Okay, first you roll the Playdough long and thin, like this,” Summer said. ‘You’ in this sentence seemed to be being used very loosely, as it appeared to in fact mean ‘me’ and Summer began doing it for Dora. “How do you write Dora? I can write it in dots.”
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Raine Collindale
Playdate 7, 6-ish years old
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